Question

Reuben attached a wire between two poles on a hill as shown which is the closest to x the distance between the two poles

Answer 1

75 ft

Explanation:

Here we are given a right angled triangle with a known angle of 20°, length of the hypotenuse to be 80 and we are to find the length of the base x.

For that, we can use the formula for cosine for which we need an angle and the lengths of base and hypotenuse.

`cos \alpha =(base)/(hypotenuse)`

So putting in the given values to get:

`cos 20=(x)/(80) \\\\x= cos 20*80\\\\x=75.17`

Therefore, the value of x is the closest to 75 ft.